i worship the ground you walk on
by shiksa goddess
Summary: you don't know how lovely you are/Marius, picking up Eponine's pieces. MariusCosette, sort of MariusEponine


_**You will live, 'Ponine, dear God above**_

_**if I could close your wounds with words of love**_

_**-A Little Fall of Rain, Les Mis**_

/

He doesn't admit it, but he _has _thought about what being in love with Eponine Thenardier would be like.

As a matter of fact, up until the moment Cosette came into his life, he figured his life would be spent with Eponine, exciting and full of mischief and maybe they wouldn't be _in _love, but they would love each other and take care of each other.

Then Cosette came in, all beauty and blonde hair and frilly dresses, and suddenly mischief and best friends didn't matter as much.

He's pretty sure this is what being in love feels like.

But honestly, he's not sure.

/

She is the first casualty of the battle, and he finds himself wishing it was himself instead.

He wasn't sure how to thank Eponine. She'd been his best friend for so many years,

found the love of his life for him, _sacrificed her life _to bring a letter to Cosette.

_You are the answer to a prayer_, he'd told her. Now, she'd never know how much he meant that.

She lies bleeding in his arms, brave in her last moments.

" And rain..." She rasps.

"And rain," he nods,tears spilling onto the dirt floor. "Will make the flowers grow."

She smiles, a faint one, but one of the most beautiful things Marius has ever seen.

They lean in, but Eponine's eyes roll back into her head and close before their lips can meet.

"Eponine? Eponine?"

And his best friend is gone. His stomach sinks and his world spins and he sobs.

He sobs because as much as he loves Cosette, he needs Eponine around, too. He needs Eponine to laugh with and tease and love.

Enjolras, Combferre, Lesgles, and Prouvaire's boots appear in his blurry vision.

"She will not die in vain." Prouvaire promises.

"She will not be betrayed."

They carry her body off to bury her in a ground that was not worthy of Eponine.

_She will not be betrayed. _

/

_'Ponine, have you no fear? _

She doesn't. She has strength and resilience and a heart the size of Paris itself, but fear she lacks.

Her life, he knows, is not easy. She's a daughter of the cruel Thenardiers, but she in no way portrays the evilness they withhold.

He knows she wanders the streets, now that she's saved Valjean and Cosette from her father's robbery and been thrown out. Sometimes he sees her, out the terra-cotta window, and wants to invite her in, tell her she always has a home in his house, but he has Cosette and doesn't want to jeopardize that.

So he stops watching and pretends he hasn't seen a thing.

/

It strikes him one day that maybe his best friend had _wanted _to die.

His eyes widen visibly and he gasps loud enough for his wife to hear.

Her bloodshot eyes question him from across the room.

Marius and Cosette grieve. He for Eponine and his fallen fellow soldiers and she for her long-lost mother, both for Valjean.

"What is it, Marius?"

"It's nothing, Cosette. It's nothing."

Her blue eyes narrow. "You're thinking about Eponine, aren't you?"

His eyes soften.

"Yes."

Cosette sighs and sits on his lap, wrapping her arms around his neck.

"It's okay, Marius. I know you miss her."

He nods. He suddenly breaks down, hugging Cosette close to him and sobbing into the soft blue satin of her dress.

He thinks of all the times he'd seen pain across Eponine's hardened face.

Maybe, he thinks, she was in love with me. Maybe I was oblivious.

Maybe if I hadn't sent her on the errand. Maybe if I'd never known her.

_Maybe I could've saved her. _

/

She's thinking about everything and nothing at all.

While she dies, she feels more alive than she ever had.

It's true, he knows. She feels no pain. She never had.

_Don't you fret, m'sieur Marius. _

He does fret. He worries and weeps and wishes but in reality there's not much else he could've done.

"_Who killed Eponine?" _He thinks. _"Who made a fatal mistake?" _

He hadn't had a gun in his hands that day, but he's pretty sure the answer is himself.

/

He'd never feel love like she'd felt for him, even in her dying moments.

She hadn't a home to go to, a career, a husband , a child, and but one friend in the world.

Yet she had succeeded. She had sacrificed her family by screaming, her home by the same, her love by delivering the letter, and her life by returning to him.

And, most importantly, she had loved.

She'd loved him when he was down, when he'd get a bad marking in his class, when he pitied himself over trivial things, when he'd loved another.

When he had never loved her.

/

_You're here, that's all I need, to know. _

The truth, he finds, is that he _did _love her, in a way that you love your sibling, and she had known that, as it had been like that for years.

Yet when she died, all she'd wanted was him by her side and she would die happy.

He didn't think that he, Marius Pontmercy, would ever have that much meaning to anyone.

_We'd been best friends, _he told himself often. _You don't even know she was in love with you. _

(But he does)

In her last moment, he leans in and she uses her last strength to pull herself up, but their lips don't meet and then she's gone.

He must admit, he's sort of disappointed. As well as being heartbroken. He'd spent a while wondering what being with Eponine Thenardier would be like.

/

He sees Cosette every day when he wakes up. He knows she is beautiful, the way her blonde hair spills over the bed, the curves of her body rising and falling as she inhales and exhales delicately. She is fragile and doll-like in every way that Eponine was strong and stubborn.

He _knows _he is in love with Cosette, and even if he wasn't, Eponine was gone, right?

He just can't _not _wish for a different life, a life where he and Cosette are happily in love (as they are now) and Eponine is his very-much-alive best friend and she and the love of _her _life are there, watching proudly as he and Cosette get married and all of his friends won the battle and came out out alive and Valjean still stood by Cosette and hiim, watching over them, and maybe they could be happy and not as miserable as they are.

He thinks about ending it, just escaping from this world that seemed to have so much misery in store for him. Cosette is pretty much all he has left in the world, he realizes.

But then again, he is all that she has left in hers.

Cosette's bright eyes flutter open, and he knows it's not over yet.

/

They'd promised him that Eponine had not died in vain, yet they'd died, too.

But she was too good of a person to have died for nothing.

Marius Pontmercy was a man now, a husband, a father, a soldier in the military.

Before he leaves again, he heads back to the grounds where the barricade had once been.

It is mostly still dirt and rubble, but he heads to the small patch of dirt where Eponine's body lay.

He tries not to think about what she must look like-must be- now, decayed to nothing but bones in the span of the five years that had passed since her death.

Her so-callled "grave" is still marked by the stone he'd pushed into the soil after all these years. He knows his best friend is there, or at least her shell is. He knows that if he dug her body up, it wouldn't look like Eponine, and even if it did, it would not have the liveliness and courage Eponine held.

He wonders what battle he'll fight next, what obstacle will come his way, and he knows Eponine will always be standing right beside him.

He steps onto the dirt six feet above her cadaver and he almost swears he can feel her strength and power rise into his body.

Marius walks away from the barricade, ready for a new battle to begin.

_You will not die in vain, 'Ponine. _

_You have not died in vain._

**.fin.**

**AN: Well that was my horrible attempt at an introduction to the Les Mis fandom :P**

**I feel I was too repetative throughout this. **

**I'm sorry. **

**I guess this is sort of non-linear, but the past is normally in flashbacks, so maybe not really. **

**I made a few tweaks to the canon, so please don't point out continuity/logistic errors when you see them. Or you can, if that's really something that gets you through the night.**

**-Tessa-**


End file.
